


1. Apples

by Molly



Series: Interstitial Spaces [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-03
Updated: 2011-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 13:19:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"Did I mention the part about the alien city?"</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Apples

**Author's Note:**

> These three stories -- Apples, Brokedown Palace, and Configuration -- were originally planned as the beginning of an ongoing series in which John and Rodney get to know each other between the moments we see on screen. Time and fandom got away from me, and I don't think I'll be continuing it; but I do think they stand pretty well on their own as one possible way the SGA team began.

When the city rose up out of the water and (almost) everybody lived, when the aliens (who looked just like humans) were asleep in borrowed beds and the other aliens (who looked like John Carpenter thought them up) were awake and hungry -- and when, incidentally, his commanding officer (who'd hated him) was dead -- John told Doctor Weir he was going to check on his security teams and told his security teams he was meeting with Doctor Weir. Then he found a flight of stairs that didn't light up and hid out, ice cold and shaking, in the stairwell. Somewhere topside, the science guys were winding down the last of the party by themselves, too hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline to sleep. John tried to think about that, but every face he called up had crosshairs around it and a red dot of laser floating lazily at the center. He had his P-90 on him, not in his hands but there, because this place, this Atlantis, was seriously fucked up and you apparently never knew who you might have to kill.

It was McKay who found him -- the guy from the Chair, the guy John half-suspected was behind Weir's offer to come along. That was reason enough to glare when his hiding place doubled its population.

"What's a guy got to do to get a little privacy around here?" he said, shoving McKay's flashlight out of his face and trying to edge past him along the wall.

"I don't know, find some place better than a public stairwell?" McKay's eyebrows were up and the corners of his mouth were down; John would have thought he was mad, but even the short ramp-up to Atlantis had taught him McKay always looked like that. "You're directly between the control room and my equipment, which puts you directly between my equipment and me. Expect frequent disruptions if you plan to hang out here a lot."

"I don't."

"Anyway, why aren't you upstairs? Everybody's looking for you. There's about forty thousand things up there in need of a laying on of your very special hands."

John caught himself before his eyes dropped down to his hands. He kept them on McKay instead. "I'm..."

"Freaking out?"

John narrowed his eyes. "Processing," he said firmly.

"The last time I 'processed' alone on the stairs in the dark, my therapist bumped me up to two appointments a week. Maybe you should see somebody."

"I don't need to see anybody," John said, keeping his voice very, very even. "I just need a minute. By myself."

"To process," McKay said. "Of course."

"Look." John took a deep breath and he wasn't going to say anything with it, he wasn't. But. "Look. We're in an alien city, McKay. The rest of you people, with your Area 51s and your stargates and your top secret ice cap bases, you guys can be all ho, hum about it, but me? I found out a week and a half ago and didn't actually believe in any of it until this morning. And now there's alien vampires and _drowning,_ and I'm apparently responsible for all of it, so I think I'm entitled to a five-minute freak-out in a stairwell, if you don't mind!"

McKay stared at John, and for a second John stared back, shocked. He hadn't strung that many words together for anyone else's benefit since college. It made him feel a little dizzy.

"Oh," McKay said, wide-eyed.

"Right," John said, "'Oh'. And -- and you know what else? I just ... I basically just euthanized a guy I barely knew, in what could very easily be seen by my superiors as a _coup,_ and now I have to do his job. In an _alien city._ " He took a step closer to McKay, his breath coming hard and fast and actually hurting his lungs. "Did I mention the part about the alien city?"

"Look, Major, uh--"

"Sheppard. And I've never actually been in charge of anything outside my wingspan, and this place is full of Marines. Marines, McKay! What the hell do I know about Marines?"

"Major Sheppard. Maybe you better sit down. You're having kind of a--"

"Fit?"

"Stress reaction, I was going to say, but that works, too." McKay put his hands on John's shoulders, and it was a measure of how far out of his tree John was that he didn't even care. He let himself be pushed down into a squat, and then toppled over onto his ass on the stairs. McKay said, "What--hm. Okay. Wait here," and took off down the corridor.

"Coward!" John shouted after him. His voice echoed back mixed with something that sounded a lot like "asshole", which John decided to blame on a trick of acoustics. He was breathing better, still shook but not actively shaking, so he was inclined to be a little bit generous. By the time McKay got back with a knapsack clutched jealously in his arms, John was almost ready to try out his knees again.

Except.

"Stop that," McKay ordered, shoving him back down onto the step. "You're suffering from an unexpected expansion of reality, you're not grounded yet. You'll fall over."

"I will _not_ fall over," John said, glaring, but he stayed where he was. "Where'd you go?"

" _I_ fell over," McKay muttered, fishing around in the sack. "My first time through the gate? I fell over and threw up. Twice. And all I had to deal with was untimely sunlight and farmland. The wormhole is kind of crazy, don't you think? You spend your whole life manipulating numbers on a computer screen, and then one day _visible math_ grabs you by the scruff of the neck and flings you halfway across the galaxy. That's when you stop being a theoretician -- when you step across the event horizon. Everything gets really applied, after that. Here," McKay finished, dropping onto the step just below John's. He pulled his hand out of his bag and tossed John an apple. "Don't drop it. Gravity bites."

John caught it out of reflex, but he couldn't stop looking at McKay even when the flood of words had stopped.

"What?" McKay demanded, when the five seconds of silence between them proved too much for him. "You're the only one who gets to talk? I may not be the galaxy's foremost expert on interpersonal communication -- not even this galaxy's -- but I'm reliably informed that it involves more than one person communicating."

John pulled a knife out of the sheath at his ankle.

"Oh, hey." McKay edged away on his step. "Is that really--"

"For the apple, McKay." John waved his knife a little, aimlessly. He cut the apple cleanly in two and handed half to McKay. "Not that I wasn't tempted."

"Ha," McKay said, around a huge mouthful of apple. "That would have been scarier if your hands weren't shaking."

John stared down at his hands. They were getting better. "Where'd you get this, anyway? There weren't any apples at the party."

"Swiped it from the SGC mess hall before we left. I have a box of candy bars, too, but you aren't even close to flipping out enough for me to crack that open. Who knows how long it might have to last me?"

John shook his head slowly, and smiled. It was the first time his face had felt natural since he stepped through the stargate. Hell, since he heard about the stargate. So what if he had a breakdown in an alien stairwell on an alien planet with a total stranger; he also had an _apple._

"Eat," McKay ordered, rolling his eyes. "It'll turn brown."

It was green and not quite ripe, sour and a little tough. Good for baking, maybe, not so good for eating. John sucked his half down in about ten seconds, too greedy to savor it, and wished for more. "God," he said, licking the juice off his fingers.

McKay grinned, and fished in his bag again.

  
.end


End file.
